Photochemical synthesis of nanosheet tin di/sulfide with sunlight response on water pollutant degradation

• Main Authors: Ab’lah, N. (Author), Elong, K. (Author), Jalani, M.A (Author), Kasim, M.F (Author), Matmin, J. (Author), Omar, Q. (Author), Osman, H. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019
• Subjects: Light-assisted synthesis; Methylene blue; Nanosheets morphology; Photochemical synthesis; Photo-degradation; Sunlight response; Tin di/sulfide; Two-dimensional materials; Water pollutant
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher; View in Scopus

 The photochemical synthesis of two-dimensional (2D) nanostructured from semiconductor materials is unique and challenging. We report, for the first time, the photochemical synthesis of 2D tin di/sulfide (PS-SnS2-x, x = 0 or 1) from thioacetamide (TAA) and tin (IV) chloride in an aqueous system. The synthesized PS-SnS2-x were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), a particle size distribution analyzer, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermal analysis, UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DR UV–Vis), and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. In this study, the PS-SnS2-x showed hexagonally closed-packed crystals having nanosheets morphology with the average size of 870 nm. Furthermore, the nanosheets PS-SnS2-x demonstrated reusable photo-degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye as a water pollutant, owing to the stable electronic conducting properties with estimated bandgap (Eg) at ~2.5 eV. Importantly, the study provides a green protocol by using photochemical synthesis to produce 2D nanosheets of semiconductor materials showing photo-degradation activity under sunlight response. © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.